Anthony McElrea Snodgrass is without doubt one of the most important scholars of Classical Archaeology of the past 50 years; he is an authority on the later prehistory of Greece, the Early Iron Age and Archaic periods of Greek history, Greek military history, Homer, Classical Art History and Archaeological Survey. He is currently an Emeritus Professor of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge, as well as a Fellow of the British Academy, of Clare College, Cambridge, and of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Snodgrass taught at Edinburgh University from 1961–1976, and from 1976–2001 was the Lawrence Professor of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge. His best known works include Early Greek Armour and Weapons (1964), Arms and Armour of the Greeks (1967), The Dark Age of Greece (1971), Archaic Greece: the Age of Experiment (1980), An Archaeology of Greece: the Present State and Future Scope of a Discipline (1987), Homer and the Artists: Text and Picture in Early Greek Art (1998) and Archaeology and the Emergence of Greece (2006). In addition to his own research, Snodgrass has supervised a generation of outstanding students, many of whom have themselves gone on to become innovators and leaders in the field of Classical Archaeology today.
This volume is a diverse and fitting 20-chapter tribute to this great scholar. Despite being published in 2016, this volume is actually the second of two volumes which grew out of a 2014 conference held in Magdalene College, Cambridge, to celebrate the eightieth birthday of Snodgrass. This volume represents offerings by friends and colleagues of the honorand, while the forthcoming first volume, An Age of Experiment: Classical Archaeology Transformed (1976–2014), edited by L. Nevett and J. Whitley, will consist of papers by former students.
While it may not be a common thing to point out a criticism in a volume of honorary papers, I did occasionally find myself frustrated with a number of typos and referencing inconsistencies throughout the volume (e.g. ‘Magdalene’ College being misspelled in the preface). These faults are minor, and on the whole, they do not detract from the overall quality of the papers.
The 20 chapters are listed under six thematic sections, each of which reflects a different aspect of Snodgrass's research interests: Section 1, ‘Prehistory’, is composed of three papers. The first of these is O. Dickinson's enjoyable and insightful study, ‘“The Coming of the Greeks” and all that’, in which he argues that it was really during the Early Iron Age that Greek cultural traditions began to take hold, despite elements of Greek culture existing during the Bronze Age. T. Meissner's chapter ‘Archaeology and the Archaeology of the Greek Language: on the Origin of the Greek Nouns in -εύς’ follows along a similar theme and presents a fascinating case for this particular ending being incorporated into Greek language with the introduction of specialised industries/technologies onto the Greek mainland during the Bronze Age. The final chapter in this section, V. Stissi's ‘Survey, Excavation and the Appearance of the Early Polis’, explores a long-standing problem of field surveys, namely the relative scarcity of finds of Early Iron Age and Archaic dates. This lightness in the data has in turn led to a broader problem of interpreting the layout of the early polis, a problem that field survey should, in theory, be perfectly equipped to address. Stissi puts forward a very sensible argument proposing a ‘scattered town’ model in which settlements would have been made up of low-density occupation, rather than the more commonly held interpretation of the early polis being composed of dispersed hamlets or clustered settlements.
Section 2, ‘Around Homer’, is, as the title suggests, made up of papers relating to Snodgrass's interest in this subject. The first of the three papers is by M. Squire and J. Elsner and explores the topic of ‘Homer and the Ekphrasists’ with a particular focus around the narrative frame for paintings described in the Elder Philostratus’ Imagines. A. Schnapp-Gourbeillon, in ‘Homer's Audience: What Did They See?’, discusses imagery, text and the use of simile in Homer's Iliad. Finally in this section, N. Spivey, in ‘Homer and the Sculptors’, presents us with the fluidity in depictions of Homer. Spivey concludes with a charming metaphor that the rather changeable image of Homer had ‘the paradoxical power of being both definitive and flexible’ (p. 142), much like the poet himself.
Section 3, ‘The Archaic and Classical Greek World’, is the longest section and is composed of six chapters. The first paper, ‘Potters, Hippeis and Gods at Penteskouphia’ by B. d'Agostino and M.G. Palmieri (trans. F. Poole, with an appendix by A.C. Cassio), is a fascinating study of the social, religious and economic context of the famous Archaic Penteskouphia tablets, which depict much of the chaîne opératoire of pottery production. The appendix examines Κάμινος, the pseudo-Homeric epigram, and presents a challenge to the widely held assumption that it is of Attic origin, suggesting that it may even be Corinthian. F. de Polignac, in ‘Space, Society, Religion: a Short Retrospective and Prospective Note’, makes a strong case for integrating topographic paradigms into studies of Greek sanctuaries, and the role that these can play in helping us to better understand the role of space in ancient society. The third chapter in this section is by S. Fachard and is a compelling study entitled ‘Modelling the Territories of Attic Demes: a Computational Approach’. This paper marks a return to Snodgrass's interest in polis organisation and explores the issue of polis territory through examining Attic demes and hinterlands using GIS modelling. J.M. González's ‘Hesiod and the Disgraceful Shepherds: Pastoral Politics in a Panhellenic Dichterweihe?’ continues along the subject of rural aspects of the polis. This chapter explores the representation of shepherds in Hesiod's poems, presenting them as a source of social tension, as a reminder of the pre-polis past, during the time that ideas of the polis and Panhellenism would have been emerging. T. Hölscher's ‘“Is Painting a Representation of Visible Things?” Conceptual Reality in Greek Art: a Preliminary Sketch’, is an intriguing discussion about the degree to which depictions may be considered realistic in (mostly) Greek painted vases. K. Rutter's ‘Coins in a “Home Away from Home”: the Case of Sicily’, the sixth and final chapter in this section, speaks to Snodgrass's early interest in Sicily. This paper is an analysis of Archaic and Classical Greek and non-Greek coinage from the island, and considers variability in size/weight and iconography of coins, but also highlights some of the mechanisms (e.g. trade, warfare) relating to the diffusion of coinage on Sicily.
Section 4, ‘The Greeks and their Neighbours’, features two papers. The first, ‘Life on Earth and Death from Heaven: the Golden Pectoral of the Scythian King from the Tolstaya Mogila (Ukraine)’ by E. Künzl, is a carefully situated study of an astounding piece of gold jewellery, adorned with thematic decorative friezes depicting an idealised Scythian life as well as representing danger to that life. The Golden Pectoral features superb depictions of Scythians, a golden fleece, griffins, lions, horses, panthers and a series of other animals, including locusts. Künzl's intriguing interpretation is that the latter are key to understanding the true meaning of this piece – that it is representative of real and imagined dangers to Scythian society, be they griffins or attacks by swarms of locusts. ‘The Idea of an Archetype in Texts Stemming from the Empire Founded by Cyrus the Great’ by G. Nagy is a contextualised study of the role of language and narrative on the Cyrus cylinder and expressing the legitimacy of Cyrus as king of Persia.
Section 5, ‘The Roman and Much Wider World’, features three engaging papers on diverse topics. H. Hurst's chapter, ‘Loropéni and Other Large Enclosed Sites in the South-West of Burkina Faso: an Outside Archaeological View’, marks a considerable geographic departure from the rest of this book. It is a thoroughly enjoyable chapter, which despite its spatial remove, has considerable methodological overlap with Snodgrass's research on the intersection of the transmission of oral histories, textual evidence and material remains. It also makes a strong case for testing assumptions through systematic fieldwork, a seemingly self-evident point but one which is not emphasised nearly often enough in modern-day Classical Archaeology. A. Schnapp's delightful chapter, ‘The Poetics of Ruins in Ancient Greece and Rome’, explores the theme of (Greek) ruins, nostalgia and the inevitable march of time in Roman poetry. Finally, R.M. Schneider, ‘Context Matters: Pliny's Phryges and the Basilica Paulii in Rome’, offers an erudite, yet contextually grounded, exploration of the archaeology and written history of this famous building in the Forum of Rome, and some of the problems that assumptions based on one source can cause.
The final section, ‘The Scholar in the University and in the Field: Personal Histories’, is a wonderful section composed of three papers representing different phases of Snodgrass's career. This would have been well-suited as an introductory section to the Festschrift. The first paper is by R., one of the editors, and reminisces about Snodgrass's years at Edinburgh University. This charming chapter presents a nice balance of academic context and fond memories of the honorand's time at Edinburgh University, including a shared love for hill-walking in the Scottish Highlands. I thoroughly enjoyed this chapter, although I would have liked to see an image of the small John Goodall landscape painting that is described in the final paragraph. The second chapter, by P. Cartledge, discusses Snodgrass's early years as a doctoral student of John Boardman at Oxford, his time as the Lawrence Professor of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge during a time of famously lively academic discourse around archaeology, and more recently as a campaigner for the reunification of the Parthenon marbles. The final paper is by the other editor, B., a long-time collaborator of Snodgrass on their field survey work in Boeotia. It is an enjoyable blend of personal stories, peppered with serious academic points relating to their collaborative fieldwork. As a field survey specialist myself, the research of Snodgrass and B. in Boeotia is something that I hold up as being of fundamental importance to anyone researching in this area. Prior to reading this paper, however, I was unaware of the beginnings of their survey work in Boeotia … I cannot recall another paper causing me to laugh aloud as this one did. What a lovely way to end an excellent volume honouring such a pioneering, influential, and evidently good-humoured, scholar as Snodgrass.
